The problem with Lifelines…

is that you have to insert them before you make a mistake. I accomplished the bit in the photograph early Friday morning. I suppose that this little piece of knitting was doomed from the start. I cast on with size 4 needles, which was entirely too small and then switched to 6.  After my posts acknowledging that I was perhaps a bit too inflexible about accepting my knitting mistakes I figured that no one was going to notice those first few rows and really, I could let it go. (Stop laughing. I truly had made my peace with it.) About an inch later, I decided things were going well and that like anyone who’s ever used a computer knows, now was a good time to save. I ran a thread for a lifeline. This might be a good time to mention that I have crashed at least two computers while saving my work.  Not the “Expletive deleted, I lost an hour’s worth of work”-get-some-tea-while-I-reboot-the-machine type of crash either. The “I hope you backed up because we need to replace the hard drive”- kind of crash.  It wasn’t pretty.  Nor was it pretty when I continued knitting after the lifeline to discover another ten rows later that I dropped a stitch somewhere around row 16.  Maybe you can see it.  Did I frog back?  Here’s a surprise - NO! Didn’t expect that twist did ja?I dug out my handy crochet hook and prepared for a bit of surgery.  Normally I do this without a hook for the simple reason that I never have the hook handy when I need it.  However, black lace mohair in bad light = use the proper tools. Crochet hook it was.  The problem was the yarn overs occur on both sides of the work.  I stuck at that damn dropped stitch for a full 45 minutes trying to recreate the proper looking stitch pattern before finally crying uncle. The fuzziness and stickiness of the yarn and my own aging eyes defeated me.  I caved.  I ripped the thing back. Back past the lifeline that I ran with every good intention. Ripped out an entire morning’s achievement. Ripped back to row fifteen and resigned myself to making a fresh start. Unfortunately, at row fifteen, the yarn exploded. I had fiddled with that yarn over so much that when I got to the row, the whole thing fell apart. Now suddenly it didn’t stick to it self at all. You’d think it magically turned into alpaca the way those stitches fell out.  At this point I decided that it was time to admit to total defeat. There was no use.  The yarn won. I pulled the whole thing out and wound it back up into a little ball.  I chalked the experience up to swatching.  A learning experience. I was schooled by the mohair.I got the last laugh though.  I cast on again, this time with the proper size needles and now as I type this I have 75 beautiful rows with three lovely lifelines (only needed once) and one dropped stitch (easily fixed). Clearly the yarn wasn’t really against me after all.  It was just reminding me of what I already knew. That cast on was too tight and was going to bug me every time I looked at it. When you go against your nature, bad things happen.  I should have just frogged when I first had the urge.  I’d be at least 30 rows ahead today if I did. Still, I’m happy.  The first few rows now look great.  There’s probably a mistake in there somewhere, but I can’t see it.  And that’s just the way I like it.